As some of you may remember, Animated Meat first came to life in 2008 as a way to document some sights that managed to slip through the cracks of most popular travel websites. You may also remember that the original website was built on Apple's now defunct iWeb. From there, it migrated over to WordPress where it met an untimely demise at the hands of Russian hackers. Many of those old, pre-2012 entries have found a new home here in the Classics section. I would consider these posts as my starting place as a writer, probably comparable to a musician's first demo tapes. They are very rough, but I took them all seriously and wrote each one with passion. While I would like to believe that I have matured in my abilities as a writer, it is my hope that I carry this same blind passion into all of my new efforts.

Did you ever read “Fight Club”? It was a book written by some honors student that has a fantasy about getting into fistfights. It got turned into a movie and millions of men saw it and fanaticized about getting into fistfights. And you know what happened? Nothing. None of those men went out and got into fistfights. Instead, they would stand around at the copier at work and say, “Hey, did you see ‘Fight Club’?” And then the other guy would say, “Remember what the first rule is.” And then the first guy would say, “Oh, you’re right. Did you get a chance to look over that memo from corporate?”

Now, while all those guys sit around and play Modern Warfare and fanaticize about fistfights, the women are laying it down. Not fistfights so much, but as we recently found out, roller derby is not for the faint of heart. This is a full contact sport. And who are the ladies sweating it our all in order to bring about a better gladiator sport? It turns out that they’re your friends and neighbors. None of them are getting rich doing this. This is a sport fueled by the love of raw contact.

Yes, this is a tough sport. But it’s also a sport that has an incredible sense of humor. On the night we went out, we witnessed Blocka Kahn and some of her sisters run ragged on each other.

And unlike the fictional fight clubs detailed in “Fight Club” somewhere near you on any Saturday night, there is a roller derby going down. Seek them out.